Pro Patria Mori
by TNOandXadric
Summary: Twenty-three dead; no survivors.


**Warnings: **Violence, coerced sex/forced prostitution, attempted suicide, self-harm, forced body modification.

* * *

She works in the textile factories, maintaining the machines. Most of her immediate coworkers are adults, men, mostly, too old for the Games. Her hands are slender enough to fit where theirs will not, and they sometimes warn her not to be reaped; the maintenance jobs pay less than production, and a replacement would be hard to come by.

She is seventeen on reaping day. Her name is in more times than her twin; Alice's work pays more, so it seems only fair that Hatter should be the one to sign up for their tesserae.

Alice holds her hand as they line up in the square. Hatter concentrates on the nails digging into her skin and the flash of camera lenses catching the sun, the prickle of sweat along her forehead. This year's mentor mounts the stage, hands balled into fists that still tremble when the broadcast begins. Morris is his name; he ran the cafeteria at Hatter's factory until he won his Games by poisoning the other tribute's food supplies.

The Capitol spokesperson calls Hatter's name, and it takes too long to extricate herself from Alice's grip to mount the stage. Hatter can feel them all staring, though she doesn't try to return it. She stares straight ahead, at the factory wall, and wishes she could feel the hum of an engine instead.

* * *

The male tribute is a twelve-year-old boy named Thimble. He trips over the stairs on the way up to the stage.

* * *

She tries to cry, when Alice comes to bid her goodbye. She holds her sister and makes comforting, meaningless noises while Alice weeps onto her shoulder, and her own eyes stay stubbornly dry. "I'll come back," she says. The words reverberate in her chest; if she tapped her sternum, she's certain the sound would be hollow. "I'll come back."

She has to. She's the only family Alice has left.

Their parents died when they were fourteen. Mother in a machinery accident; father from a disease that left him too weak to sit up and coughing until his lips were slick with blood.

They had brothers, three. The eldest was ten at the time. Too young to work and too young to sign up for tesserae, they'd been claimed by the state and sent to an orphanage. Hatter didn't know where, only that it was outside of Eight.

Thimble comes from a family of six, she learns as they board the train. His parents, a brother too old to volunteer for him, two younger sisters. There are tear tracks on his cheeks, his hair chaotic and his clothes rumpled. Hatter's mind rebels when she tries to imagine how his last words must have gone.

* * *

"What can you do?" Morris asks her, later. She can hear the exhaustion in his voice, read it as easily as his pallor and the dark bags beneath the hazel eyes that used to gleam when he smiled at her.

Engines, she thinks, and electricity. Since she started signing up for tesserae, she's been scrounging whatever information she can find on edible plants and throwing knives in the evenings with Dodo, who won the Games a decade ago and was reluctant to teach her until she offered to fuck him. Alice hadn't liked it at the time, but now she'd no doubt be relieved.

Hatter tells him everything. She left her privacy behind in Eight. He fixes her with the weariest look she's ever seen and says nothing. "I don't want you to bring me back," she says.

"You can fight until you drop from exhaustion and I can argue with sponsors until my throat ruptures," he says, "but that boy is not going to make it."

She knows he's right, but her head is full of tearstained cheeks and a family that hasn't broken beyond repair yet. "I still want to try."

* * *

Capitol is brighter than it appears on the screens back home. Everything is clean and reflective and Hatter shields her eyes from the glare as she disembarks. Thimble's hand is cold and clammy in her own until he's whisked off for his prep team to shape him into something acceptable for Capitol's consumption.

Her team wash her three times and then rip off any hair they can find below the neck before they deem her fit enough to begin styling. She stands perfectly still and tries not to think about their hands fluttering against her skin, the way they coo over her unusual red hair and how pale her skin turned out to be under the omnipresent layer of grease.

They dress her in a silvery-grey shift made of silk. It exposes more than it hides and dwindles to artfully tattered threads at the hem, halfway to her knees. The final touch is a pair of gloves that stretch to her elbow and make her forearms itch, to hide the callouses they couldn't sand away.

* * *

When she next sees Thimble, he's in a suit several shades darker than her dress, embroidered with white patterns reminiscent of a loom. They have a moment before they board their chariot, and she squeezes his shoulder and whispers, "I'll get you through this. I will. I promise."

He grips her hand tight enough to make her fingertips turn cold and numb, and she lets that be the anchor for her mind while she smiles for the audience. If she lets her eyes go out of focus and tries not to think of anything but Thimble's quivering fingers interlaced with hers, she can imagine the cheers into a cacophony of combustion, a living engine she can use to survive the Games.

If Thimble is to return to his family, she must be the last to die.

* * *

"Survival," Morris tells them before training the next morning. "Avoid the weapons. Focus on not starving to death or dying of exposure. You can show off combat when you're alone with the gamemakers, if you must."

Thimble ventures to the camouflage station, and Hatter is about to join them when Morris stops her with her name, so soft she almost thinks she imagined it. He studies her for a moment, mouth twisted up in something like pain. "Do what you have to do," he says at last, "but if he dies…"

She flinches. It's a possibility too real to consider right now.

"Don't just give up," he whispers.

Hatter doesn't intend to; she wants to keep at least one of her promises.

* * *

Hatter stands before the gamemakers and braids fishing line until they tell her to go away; they give her a two. Thimble, who reports that he painted his hand into a passable imitation of concrete, scores a three.

* * *

For the interviews, her prep team puts her in a horribly clingy dress that feels as if it's been vacuum-sealed onto her. The fabric gleams like burnished metal, and pieces of it have been carved away in strange, abstract whorls that the team claims are representative of embroidery. They give her a crocheted scarf, at least, and she wraps it around herself as soon as they're gone.

Thimble huddles closer to her while they wait. Hatter examines the other tributes. The pair from One go first, Duchess with her calculated grace and talent with a spear and Ches, whom Hatter saw scale a narrow metal pole in a matter of seconds. Then there's hulking Rook and his more wiry counterpart Jabber from two. The ones from Three are both young; Dormy looks little older than Thimble and Surge's voice is still crackly and uncertain.

Dee and Dum from Four are twins who volunteered, their eyes hungry in a way that sends a shiver down Hatter's spine. Snark, the boy from Five, breaks down and cries halfway through his interview; his companion, Boo, giggles and flirts with the audience, although Hatter can hear the desperate note in her voice. From Six are an emaciated girl named Scarab and Isaac, who stares dully at the broken pocket watch that is his district token for the duration of the interview. Tulgey from Seven speaks at length of her experience in the lumber yard, and Egg mutters that he was planning to be a peacemaker.

Thimble shivers when Hatter lets go of his hand to be interviewed.

She sits on the too-comfortable couch and lets Tenniel Beaumont play with her hair, gives the answers the audience wants, tells them how proud she is to be chosen and how lovely everything has been and tries not to think about the blood she is planning to spill less then twenty-four hours from now.

Thimble spends his interview saying goodbye to his family. The Capitol citizens lap it up; Hatter cannot see faces, but she can hear the vicarious suffering in their sighs and beneath that, the desire for more. Her stomach rolls.

After that, it goes quickly. Barry and Belle from Nine. Sheep and Haigha from Ten. Flower and Glass from Eleven. Last of all are Marianne and Bill from Twelve, both of whom seem to have given up already.

* * *

Morris finds her in the bathroom, afterwards, shortly after she retches up the final contents of her stomach. He has a glass of water, which she sips while he sits with her. "You can't hesitate in the arena," he says and watches her carefully as she nods. "I'm sorry."

He makes no move to touch her when he goes, and she's grateful for that.

* * *

Over dinner, they listen while Morris lays out their strategy. Thimble will grab whatever is closest to his plate and run as fast as he can away from the cornucopia; Hatter will try for any nearby weapons before following.

Find water. Find shelter. Look for any source of food. They're simple instructions; Hatter wishes there could be something more tangible, something as neat and orderly as a blueprint and knowing that tightening a wire _here _will yield the desired result _there_. The Games are designed to derail the best-laid plans, though; Morris tells them, again and again and again, that being adaptable will be their greatest advantage.

* * *

The arena is a marsh.

Before the gong can sound, Snark steps off his platform, and chunks of muck and torn flesh explode into the air. The mine leaves him alive, his legs mangled beyond recognition, and his agonized wails fill the final thirty seconds.

Hatter steps over a piece of his boot to get off her platform. She scoops up a pack of knives and a second backpack and runs. Thimble is still on his platform, his eyes fixed on the bloody mess that is Snark's death throes; she seizes his hand and drags him away from the carnage, the screams of the dying lending fuel to her feet. She doesn't look back.

* * *

Not just a marsh, she realizes, after the cannons from the bloodbath have faded and she dares to let them stop moving. They hunker down in the shelter of a crumbled stone wall; she finds a few rusted iron spikes that look as if they used to be a gate. There's a little pond not far away.

It's Thimble who finds the headstone. The lettering carved on it has worn away to near illegibility, but there's enough for them to recognize what it is.

Once they know to look for them, they see more. They're everywhere, most of them uprooted or broken. She eyes the pond that so briefly looked like it might be their salvation, and wonders if the rot has spread into it. There's a bottle in the backpack she picked up and a tiny vial of iodine. She fills it; her hands shake while she adds the iodine.

The knives are not what she'd hoped. Only five of them are for throwing, and the balance and weight is near enough to the ones Dodo taught her with that she feels confident enough in wielding them, but mostly they're meant for close combat. The largest is a foot long and curves to a sharply pointed hook; tearing it out of a person would do twice as much damage of sticking it in.

The cannon fired seven times today. Snark and six more. She takes Thimble's hand and they walk on, keeping close to the stone wall, she hunching down in case anyone else ended up in the area. "I'm scared," he whispers; Hatter can do nothing but squeeze his hand.

"It'll be all right," she tells him. The lie leaves a bitter taste on her tongue.

* * *

The faces light up the sky that night. Snark first of all, then Bill, then Scarab, Dormy, Glass, Haigha. The last is Duchess, from One. Hatter splits a dry and tasteless energy bar with Thimble and wonders what caused her death, if she was so dangerous that the other Careers turned against her immediately or if one of the others simply got in a lucky blow.

Thimble curls up to her side to sleep and Hatter thinks about the audience, the cameras that she knows must be hidden everywhere. They won't be focused on her, she's certain of that. No one in Capitol will care about two nobodies from Eight who didn't even score as well as the starving girl from Six.

She hopes they showed her familiarizing herself with the knives. It wouldn't be the first time a tribute has scored purposely low to hide some life-saving ability and gotten sponsors after they show their true colors in the arena.

* * *

They cross paths with Tulgey from Seven early the next morning. She has an axe, but cutting wood and cutting humans are different things and Hatter takes advantage of the other girl's second of uncertainty to bury a knife in her throat.

Tulgey falls with a gurgle. The cannon sounds a few seconds later; Hatter rescues her knife before working off Tulgey's jacket, boots, and the backpack she had slung over her shoulder. She uses Tulgey's belt to secure the axe to her corpse, to make sure it gets carried away by the hovercraft.

Thimble cries; Hatter feels nothing but a cold tightening in the pit of her stomach.

They've not gone more than ten feet when the parachute drops. Inside are a dozen gleaming knives and a loaf of light, filling Capitol bread. It won't keep, so Hatter takes enough to ease the empty feeling in her stomach and lets Thimble eat the rest.

"Thank you," she whispers, because she must. The knives are secured in a leather sash which she loops twice around her waist, hating how much safer they make her feel.

* * *

After a while they cross a second wall, in worse shape than the first. Beyond, there's more marshland. They find another small pool, and a quick investigation reveals no old graves in its immediate vicinity. They've been drinking in small amounts all day, but the bottle's still half full; Hatter empties it out and refills it as well as the one from Tulgey's pack from the new source. She drinks the entirety of the first and waits while Thimble gulps down the other, then fills them both up again.

Cattails grow thickly along the edges of the pool, and they eat as much as they can before packing more into the bag Hatter took from Tulgey. Two cannons fire as they're leaving the pool behind, one right after the other.

Ten dead. Twelve to go before she joins them.

* * *

They find berries maybe an hour later. They're round and look ready to burst, and curled underneath the bush is the boy from Three. He's clammy and his sides heave; the stench of his vomit is overpowering.

He doesn't notice them until Hatter says his name softly, and then he stares with glassy eyes. "Hurts," he manages to choke out.

Hatter uses one of the regular knives she picked up at the bloodbath to slit his throat. It seems more merciful than letting him suffer. In the pockets of his jacket, they find a spool of wire and a handful of tiny, square biscuits that taste strongly of pepper.

* * *

Surge is the last death of the day. The sunset brings with it a bitter drop in temperatures, and both Thimble and Hatter shiver uncontrollably despite the extra jackets. The night sky shows them Tulgey, Isaac, Sheep, and Surge, and Hatter's skin crawls at the reminder that she caused half of today's deaths.

They stop for the night at a cluster of rocks.

* * *

She's woken up in the darkness by Thimble's scream and lunges by instinct for his attacker. A blade swipes at her forearm, leaving a fiery trail, and she lashes out blindly; her nails connect with soft flesh and a girl cries out. Hatter feels the other girl recoil and follows, dragging a knife from her sash and stabbing down. It's not what it's meant for, but the point is sharp enough to do the job and she feels blood gush out over her hands, too hot.

She keeps up the attack until the other girl goes still and the cannon booms; as the adrenaline fades, she becomes aware of pain stinging up and down her right forearm, from fingertips to her elbow and then echoing up into her shoulder. Hatter explores the wound as best she can in the darkness and stifles a yelp when her fingers send a flash of fire spiraling through her entire arm.

"Did she hurt you?" she whispers when she can breathe again.

"My neck," Thimble says. His voice is shaky with fear, but there's no sound of the gurgle Hatter would expect if the girl had done any real damage. "You—"

"I'll be fine," Hatter says, although every movement brings tears to her eyes. She feels along the girl's corpse; her jacket is slick with blood and besides she's working with only her off hand, so she lets it stay where it is. Further searching yields a small pack secured to the girl's waist, which Hatter gives to Thimble to carry.

They can't stay here, she knows, not after the noise they've been making, but it's so dark she can't even see well enough to identify the girl whose blood is drying on her hands.

She uses some of their precious water to clean her arm, biting down hard on the sleeve of Tulgey's jacket to muffle the animal-like sounds she can't help making at the pain. There's nothing clean that she can use as a bandage, so she takes a clean, slightly serrated knife from her backpack and uses it to cut a strip from the top of her tunic. The fabric is coarse and stings almost as much as the water when she wraps it around the cut, but it stops the blood flow well enough.

She wonders whether the capital is watching her now, whether they have cameras capable of seeing through the blackness while she fixes herself and then cuts another swatch of fabric to daub iodine on the blessedly shallow cut beneath Thimble's chin.

* * *

Cannon fire marks the sunrise. Capitol must have been watching after all, because there's a tiny first aide kit waiting. There's gauze and soft cotton and a new bottle of iodine, which Hatter uses to re-bandage herself; the cut sliced deep enough that she can see the white gleam of bone between layers of flesh.

The girl she killed is Marianne; after she and Thimble gather themselves and leave, the hovercraft dips down to pick up her body.

They are over the halfway point now.

* * *

Her arm alternately throbs and aches. Another cannon goes off; Hatter wonders numbly whose passing it marks. As of last night the Careers were still intact. Then there's the two from Nine, Egg from Seven, Boo from Five, Thimble and herself.

She doesn't realize that she's parched and feverish until she sucks down the last few drops of their water. There's no pool in sight, so they meander downhill until they find a place wet enough that pressing down on the earth yields water. Thimble fills the bottles while she sets about changing her bandages. The skin around the cut is taught, shiny, and red; she wastes more iodine to clean water to pour over it, and a few more drops to go directly onto the wound itself before she wraps it again, looser than before because pulling too tight makes it throb unbearably.

They keep walking and finish the bread from Three. The sun is just passing overhead when they find the wall that marks the cemetery.

* * *

Hatter spies a clump of hemlock not long after that, as they're walking along the wall. She pulls some up, reasoning that it will be easier to poison herself than try to muster up the courage to cut open her own body.

* * *

They run into Jabber as the sun touches the horizon. She's yanking a spear out of Egg's twisted body, leaving a gaping hole in his chest. The cannon sounds as she looks up and sees them, but the knife has already left Hatter's hand. Dodo trained her with her left as well as right, so her aim isn't terrible; the knife sinks into Jabber's shoulder instead of her chest, but it's enough to stagger her.

The second knife finds her stomach, and she grunts as her legs buckle.

"Where are your friends?" Hatter asks.

"Left," Jabber wheezes. "Nearly the final eight. 'd have a better chance… alone."

It _will _be the final eight, once Jabber dies. "I'm sorry," Hatter says. Jabber manages a weak chuckle.

"I'd… do the same to you, Eight."

"I know."

Jabber kicks at her spear; it rolls closer to Hatter. "Do me a favor," she says. "I don't—want it to be slow."

Hatter picks it up slowly, watching the other girl's hands the whole time, then drives it through Jabber's heart. Jabber grunts out something that might have been a thank-you; less than a minute later, her cannon sounds.

Six to go.

Jabber has a backpack stuffed with supplies: energy bars, dried fruit, a thermos half-full of a thick potato stew, a full water bottle, brass knuckles. Thimble watches with glazed eyes while Hatter packs it all. She has to coax him into eating the stew after taking a few swallows and a handful of raisins for herself.

* * *

The cannon booms twice more. Hatter catches herself hoping that it's the Careers beginning to pick each other off and feels sick for it. Marianne's face is the first to appear in the sky that night, then Barry followed by Flower, then Egg and Jabber. Dum comes next, with Ches last of all.

"I want to go home," Thimble whispers when she tries to get him to drink some water and eat an energy bar. "I want to go home."

"I know you do," she tells him soothingly. "Soon. Soon."

Belle from Nine. Boo from Five. Rook from Two. Dee from Four. Then herself.

It's been a short Games. Most of them last a week. The longest one Hatter can remember took two and a half and ended when the gamemakers sent in a pack of ferocious, catlike mutts to drive the remaining tributes into battle. There doesn't seem much chance of that happening now; tomorrow will mark only the fourth day.

They sleep against the wall tonight. Hatter keeps watch as long as she can before exhaustion pulls her under.

* * *

It's the cold that wakes her this time. The ground that was soggy only yesterday is hard as rock now, solid ice. She rouses Thimble, who blinks sluggishly at her and only reluctantly crawls up the wall until he's standing. It's a little better once they're moving. Between them, they drink the remainder of Jabber's water and eat the last of the food they've been carrying. Hatter doubts the Games will last much longer, now, not with only six left to die.

She changes her bandage as they move. It doesn't look infected and the swelling has gone down significantly—the cold helped on that front, she supposes—but it throbs in time with her heartbeat and every movement drives a spike through the center of it. The fingers on that hand don't seem to be working right, and they're alternately numb and prickly.

After maybe an hour, Boo vaults over the wall and lands on her shoulders with a ferocious cry. An iron spike similar to the ones Hatter found on the first day is clutched in her hand, and she does her best to ram it through Hatter's skull. Hatter jerks away and it scrapes past her ear instead, tearing the skin from her cheek as it goes.

Thimble gets his arms around Boo's neck and unbalances her enough for Hatter to roll out from under her, grapple the spike out of her hand, and drive it into her chest. A cannon sounds. Three left.

* * *

The mutts come around noon in the wake of another cannon. They're large, scaly beasts with long necks and a rabbity way of moving, and they give chase until Hatter and Thimble cross some boundary known only to the gamemakers and the mutts retreat. She knows it means the others are close, but her lungs have seized up and it's all she can do to remain standing. Thimble coughs and wheezes and clings to her for support.

The arrow whizzes past her cheek; she looks up and Rook is _there_, a mere fifteen feet away, another arrow already notched and half drawn. "Hatter, isn't it?" he says, almost amiably. "Wasn't expecting you to make it this far. Glad I've got your attention now."

She draws the knife faster than he can draw his bow; her aim is off, but it glances off the edge of the bow and that's enough to make his shot fly wide, too. "I've got more arrows than you have knives," he drawls, even as he notches another. "Better start running."

It's sound advice. Hatter grabs Thimble's elbow and drags him along; another arrow whistles by, far too close. She can hear Rook laughing.

The cemetery wall looms before them. There's a gap big enough to scramble over; Thimble howls in pain as they tumble into the relative safety, and Hatter looks around, terrified. The arrow went straight through his calf.

"It's going to be okay," she tells him, not sure if he can hear her over his sobs. Rook shouts, but what might have begun as a battle cry ends in a choking, wet sound. Hatter risks a glance over the wall as the cannon sounds; Dee waves cheerfully with a short sword and shoves Rook's body out of the way.

"He poisoned those arrows, you know," Dee calls. "Sponsor gift. You won't have to kill deadweight yourself after all."

"He's not deadweight!" she shouts, her voice high with new panic. Thimble is indeed sweating, his leg having ballooned to nearly twice its normal size. But there's a cure for whatever poison it is in Capitol—there _must_ be—and if she kills Dee and herself quickly enough, there's still a chance for him. "It'll be all right," she tells him desperately.

Dee is still advancing, slowly, but when Hatter cocks her hand back to throw, the other girl puts on a startling burst of speed, wielding her sword like it's part of her. The first knife is wide by yards, and there's not time for a second because Dee launches herself into the air, the sword spinning, and it's all Hatter can do to duck out of the way so her neck stays intact.

In her peripherals, Thimble convulses.

She throws.

At this range, she couldn't fail to miss. The knife sinks into Dee's throat, and Hatter scrambles forward, half hoping that Dee will manage to wound her fatally to speed things along for Thimble's sake, but Dee lunges the other way instead.

Hatter's aware of screaming when the sword slices through Thimble's chest, aware of Dee's dying, rattly breath, of the two cannons in close succession before she can get to the hemlock in her bag.

The victor announcement reaches her ears as noise, loud words whose meaning she can't decipher. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she whispers, loud enough to rival the whine of the hovercraft and the ladder that hits the ground with a thump.

* * *

They have to tranquilize her and send two peacekeepers down to bring her to the hovercraft. She learns this from Morris, who's sitting there when she wakes up in the hospital bed.

"You did everything you could have done, Hatter," Morris tells her, too gently, while she examines her unbroken skin, the alien and painful weight around her chest from where her prep team augmented her breasts to Capitol standards. Her hands are clean, unblemished by the callouses they hated so much and unmarked by blood that felt like it would never wash off.

She doesn't respond, but Morris doesn't seem to expect her to.

* * *

Tenniel Beaumont's hand lingers on her hip when he guides her into the interview chair. He sweeps her hair away from where she's let it fall forward into her face. "Let them see how beautiful you are," he says, and the audience crows its agreement, as if they couldn't already, when she's dressed in gauze and torn scraps of cotton.

When he asks her how it felt when she knew she had won, she stares at him blankly until he clears his throat and announces the review of the Games. She watches dully while they replay the highlights and tries to blot out Tenniel's cheery commentary, how he admired her unexpected skill with throwing knives and her loyalty to her district partner, how moved everyone was when she stabbed Marianne to death in his defense and how exciting her final battle with Dee was.

Morris is waiting for her offstage. He hands her his coat without a word; it's thick polyester and falls past her knees.

* * *

"It's never going to stop, is it," she says that evening as they drive to the banquet that President Everheart is throwing in her honor.

"No," he says.

* * *

The president's hair is dyed the exact shade of Hatter's. Hatter makes a few weak stabs at showing the sense of honor everyone expects her to feel about this and picks at the plate of scalloped potatoes and paper-thin slices of beef that Morris collects for her.

She's introduced to the sponsor who sent the medical kit, a tall woman with sharp cheekbones and even sharper shoulders who excuses herself twice to vomit in the bathrooms, although she eats even less than Hatter does. Before she leaves for the evening, she traces the low collar of Hatter's gown and purrs about how she'd kill for a figure like that.

Hatter isn't allowed to leave until nearly three in the morning.

* * *

She cries until her eyes dry up and a twisted corpse with Thimble's face comes to gut her. She holds her intestines in with her hands and struggles feebly when he tips her chin back to give his knife better purchase on her throat.

* * *

The first person she sees when she steps off the train is Alice, who wraps her up in a hug so tight that Hatter can barely breathe. The next is a woman who, from her red-rimmed eyes and her presence, can only be Thimble's mother. Hatter can barely look at her, but the woman hugs her all the same. Her head just reaches Hatter's shoulder. "You tried," she whispers, her voice breaking on the last word. "Thank you for that."

Then she's gone again. Morris escorts Hatter and Alice to the victor's village and the house that Capitol assigned her. "If you need anything," he says, when he leaves them at the door for his own house across the street. Alice thanks him; Hatter nods numbly, and he gives her one last, understanding look before retreating.

* * *

In the kitchen, there's a stockpile of rich Capitol food and more money than Hatter has ever seen in one place before, more than she and Alice together could ever need. She closes her eyes so she doesn't have to look at it and focuses on the ache radiating up her neck and down from her shoulders, the way she can conjure up the piercing agony in her right arm if she concentrates. "I don't want this," she whispers. She flinches when the hand touches her shoulder, but it's only Alice with sorrow in her eyes.

"We'll spread it around," Alice says softly.

* * *

Hatter locks herself in her new bedroom and curls up around a pillow that feels like it's more air than stuffing. She thinks that perhaps it's better that Thimble died, in the end; at least Capitol can no longer reach him.

* * *

"How do you stand it?" she asks Morris, days or weeks later. She's been sleeping enough to lose track of time, lately.

He shrugs. "I remember there are cameras everywhere," he says.

They walk on in silence, close enough to shield each other a little from the creeping chill. On the occasion that they pass someone else, they avoid making eye contact. It's easy, because most of the passerby do the same. "I want to start training people," Hatter says as they pass their old factory. She tried to go back to work when she returned, but victors aren't, as it turns out, allowed to hold jobs or do anything but ride Capitol's coattails.

"Everyone would benefit from more victors, except the victors themselves," Morris says, and then, "People will never stand for it."

"The Careers are no different from us," Hatter whispers, thinking of Jabber's final moments and how easily their positions might have been reversed.

"I know."

* * *

She reopens the cut that was smoothed away after the Games. It hurts no less by her own hand than it did when Marianne first struck her. This time, she lets the blood dribble out until she's lightheaded and dizzy. Alice finds her and summons the district doctor in spite of Hatter's protests.

The doctor stitches the wound shut again; Morris shows up as the doctor's covering the place with gauze. He, like Alice, says nothing until the doctor leaves.

"Why would you do something like this?" Alice demands, but Morris stops her before she can go further.

"It won't help," he tells Hatter, "it won't make anything better. Believe me."

* * *

Her arm has healed by the time her prep team arrives to fix her for her victory tour. They bemoan the scar they find on her forearm; she tells them it's been there since the arena. There's no access to the surgery that could rid her of it in Eight, so the team compromises with more of the awful elbow-length gloves.

In Seven, she's introduced to Tulgey's family and feels their burning resentment and helpless grief like knives driving through her lungs. In Six, she tours the factory where hovercrafts are built.

Five is blanketed with dry snow and bitter winds, and she shivers in the perfectly fitted light jacket that her prep team deemed sufficient for the weather while she shakes hands with the mayor and asks scripted questions about the new coal plant they're building. In Four, she dines on caviar and relays President Everheart's statement regarding a recent shipwreck.

In Three, Surge's father thanks her stiffly for helping his son out of his misery, and she finds she can't look anyone in the face after that. She tries to apologize to Jabber's family when she arrives in Two, but they thank her instead for giving Jabber an honorable death and claim that is apology enough. The party that One throws for her is almost as lavish as the one she attended in Capitol after the games.

Everyone in Twelve has a pinched, hungry look about them, and when she attends the funeral of a group of miners who died in an explosion, she leaves her gloves behind and pushes up her sleeves despite the icy air. Baring the scar is not enough of an apology, but nothing ever will be.

In Eleven, they put her on a stage that makes her stomach heave from its resemblance to a reaping platform; the two peacemakers almost managing to be unobtrusive behind her keep her from fleeing before she finishes reading from the cards she was given that morning. In Ten, she's present for a calving and interviewed afterwards. In Nine, she goes off script at last to apologize; the Capitol personnel who've been managing her hustle her out of the spotlight before she can finish the sentence and she's reprimanded like a child by a stern peacekeeper.

Back in Eight, she can at least hide in her own room after a day of being the capital's mouthpiece.

Last of all, she returns to Capitol. President Everheart crowns her in front of a crowd of hundreds. Her hair has been dyed back to its usual blonde, but the trend has caught on; Hatter meets old sponsors and new admirers, all with their hair colored varying shades of red. "It's just so _pretty_," one says with an envious sigh as he runs his fingers through her hair.

* * *

She stays in Capitol for a week. On the second day, she wakes up and the scar on her forearm is gone. On the third, a wealthy admirer invites her to dinner and speaks to her as if she's a well-trained pet; when the touching starts, Hatter cuts away everything and freezes it before it can begin to fester. All that remains is the thought that Alice will suffer the consequences if Hatter protests.

The rest of the week continues the same way; at the end of it she scrubs until her skin is raw and red as a sunburn, and the sting of near-scalding water still isn't enough to thaw the contents of her head. She returns to Eight and reopens her arm again.

This time she binds it up herself so Alice won't have to know.

* * *

Morris makes her tea and sits on the opposite end of the table while she sips. "They'll lose interest, mostly, after the next victor comes along," he says, not quite looking at her and tracing the grain of the table.

"They did this to you?" she whispers.

"A bit," he says. "The pretty ones have it worse. I'm sorry."

She drinks the tea. He reminds her to change her bandages.

* * *

She will not be a mentor this year; she'll assist Morris instead. The Capitol spokesperson gushes at her when reaping day comes. "So pleased you'll be along to learn the ropes," she says.

The tributes are a fourteen-year-old girl named Delia and sixteen-year-old Homburg, who volunteered to save his little brother. Hatter isn't sure she wants either of them to win.

On the train, Morris passes her a small, pale-brown tablet. "It'll make you sick," he tells her. "Eat it with shellfish and they won't know the difference."

She takes his advice and spends the entirety of the training period curled up and miserable in her bed, sufficiently ill to deflect her admirers' attention. When she emerges, still clammy and off-balance, the Games have begun and she has the excuse of trailing around in Morris's shadow, learning how to shepherd the children in her care.

* * *

Delia dies on the second day with a Career's noose around her throat. Homburg makes it for three more before succumbing to dehydration in the desert arena. The head of their prep team invites her to a wake, and she gulps down enough wine that she's only vaguely cognizant of the fact that it ends with hands and tongues and the heat of too many bodies in too small a space.

She knows that she cried, because the tear stains are still there in the morning.

* * *

They're not allowed to go home until after the victor gives his final interview. Hatter tries twice to jump off the roof of the building that houses the tributes and their mentors. The forcefield flings her back both times, and on the third attempt there's a peacekeeper stationed at the door who escorts her firmly back to her room.

* * *

No one comes to the train station to welcome them back to Eight. The silence is broken only by the sound of the factories, as it is every year when Eight has no victor. She walks Morris to his house and then, when she manages to unstick her throat long enough to say that she doesn't want to go to hers, he lets her escape into the solitude of a spare bedroom.

It gets dark before she hears from him again. He knocks at the door she locked behind her that Alice made soup, if she wants it. She hears his footsteps retreat after she doesn't answer.

* * *

"Do you ever just want to die?" Hatter asks on one of her daily walks with Morris.

"I tried a few times," Morris says. "I was never brave enough to finish."

They reach the perimeter fence and walk along it. No one else comes here and they won't be interrupted. "Please don't," Morris says after a while. "I'd miss you. I know that's selfish of me, but—"

"I won't," she tells him.


End file.
